Many generations ago, the Iroquois people lived in a state of perpetual war throughout their homelands in what is now New York State. Even though the Iroquois were the closest of relatives, they were merciless in their battles against each other. The people lived in a state of fear so overwhelming that they refused to leave their fenced villages without a heavy guard. Hastily planted crops were often left to decay in the tilling fields because of frequent raids, while ambushes in the nearby forests prevented the men from hunting, resulting in widespread starvation. Many Iroquois abandoned their homes, with some seeking refuge north of Lake Ontario. In one of these bands of refugees, a very special child was born. The Iroquois came to know him as Skennenrahowi, which means “Peacemaker“ in the Mohawk language. When Skennenrahowi grew to be a young man who stuttered, he informed his family that he was to undertake the great mission given to him by the Creator: to carry the Great Law of Peace to all Iroquois people. He was to return to Iroquois territory with a message of hope that would end warfare among the People of the Longhouse: the five Iroquois bands of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas. He departed from the Bay of Quinte in a canoe he had built, crossing broad Lake Ontario like a great bolt of lightning. Once he reached the eastern shore of the lake, he encountered two hunters and told them that a new day would arrive when warfare among the Iroquois would end. He began his travels, soon entering Seneca territory, where he encountered a powerful female leader named Jikonsahseh. Through reason and his good mind, he persuaded her to embrace the Great Law of Peace. In return for her conversion, Skennenrahowi established the role of clan mother, which gave Iroquois women political and social power without parallel in the world. Skennenrahowi made his way east where he met Aiionwatha(Hiawatha), a leader of the Onondaga Nation. Aiionwatha, a great orator, was also convinced to accept the Great Law by becoming Skennenrahowi’s principal disciple. Others were alarmed by the new way, including another Onondaga leader, Tadodaho, a severely deformed man who was known for his treachery. Tadodaho decided to break the spirit of Aiionwatha by having the peace advocate’s seven daughters killed. It is said Aiionwatha’s grief over their death was so great that it caused the animals to flee before him. After wandering mindlessly for days, Aiionwatha came to a small lake. Aiionwatha picked up snail shells that he made into a string, declaring that he would only heal when someone took the string and spoke the words of condolence that he needed to hear. Those words were stuttered by Skennenrahowi, the Peacemaker. With the shells he collected, Aiionwatha developed wampum, a sacred memory device subsequently used to record Iroquois history, which includes their Great Law of Peace.

Ordinarily we pay little attention to the words we speak. We concentrate instead on the meaning we intend to express and are seldom conscious of how we express that meaning. Only if we make a mistake and have to correct it or have difficulty remembering a word do we become conscious of our words. This means that most of us don’t know where the words we use come from and how they come to have themeanings they do. Since words play such an important role in our lives, making our life easy or difficult depending on which words we choose on a given occasion, exploring their nature and origin should provide an interesting adventure. English words come from several different sources. They develop naturally over the course of centuries from ancestral languages, they are also borrowed from other languages, and we create many of them by various means of word formation. Each of these sources has made a material impact on the vocabulary available to us today. First of all, it is important to know that languages may be related just like people. You have probably noticed that people from England, Brooklyn, and North Carolina all speak differently. They pronounce the same words differently and they even use different words for the same meaning. The English call the “hood“ of a car the “bonnet“ and the people in Brooklyn “schlep“ things around while people in North Carolina “drag“ them. These differences make up what are called dialects and the people in England speak one of several British dialects(“Cockney“ is one of the most colorful), the people in Brooklyn speak a Brooklyn dialect and those in North Carolina speak a Southern dialect. Dialects are variants of a language, variants with slightly different pronunciation, different grammatical rules, and slightly different vocabularies. The interesting thing about dialects is that as they continue to develop over time, the differences become greater and greater until people from one dialect area cannot understand those from another. When this happens, the people from the different dialect areas are speaking different languages. Languages are not stagnant; they don’t remain the same forever. They are constantly developing and changing. If one dialect group loses contact with people in another, the two groups are likely to develop into mutually unintelligible languages. At one time, for example, around 1,000 B.C.E., there was a single language that we call Proto-Germanic. Everyone speaking it could understand each other. But dialects emerged that developed into languages that are today called Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. These are then sister languages and Proto-Germanic is the mother language.(All languages come from one-parent families.) Obviously words changed as these languages developed from their ancestors. So the core words in English today developed from Proto-Germanic(via Old English, Middle English, into Modern English). These Germanic words include such words as “get“, “burn“, “ring“, “house“, “dog“, “think“. These words have cognates in other Germanic languages; that is, words that share the same origin. English “house“, Danish “hus“, and German “Haus“ are cognates; so are “think“ and German and Dutch “denken“. So these words are the results of 3,000 years of development in different dialects of what was originally a single language. Notice some of the rules that linguists look for: the “s“ in German often corresponds to “t“ in English(Fuss, Wasser), while the “th“ in English often corresponds to “d“ or “t“ in German:(Mutter). The “ch“ in German and the “k“ in English seem to be related, too(Milch, machen). These parallels in many words demonstrate that the languages are related.(Also notice that vowels are much more likely to change than consonants. Even the changed consonants here are very similar to each other linguistically.)

The venerable 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains about 700,000 words, but the editors recently realized they were missing one: Doh! The cartoon character Homer Simpson’s forehead-smacking lament is one of some 250 entries being added today to the dictionary, which is widely considered the leading authority on the English language. “Doh“ is now defined as “Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish,“ according to the new entry in the dictionary. The Simpsons only popularized the term; it was actually used extensively in the 1950s, the OED found. Although it is often spelled “D’oh,“ the dictionary chose to omit the apostrophe. Other newcomers to the dictionary include cheesy, which means second-rate or inferior; six-pack, meaning rippling abdominal muscles, and Bollywood, which refers to the Hindi film industry based in Bombay, India. “We’ll have terms from immuno-biology to gangster rap,“ says Jesse Sheidlower, who is head of the project for North America. The OED’s staff of 50 editors is wading through popular culture looking for new words and usages that merit an entry, as part of its 8-year-old million updating project. It is the first complete revision of the dictionary since it was completed in 1928. “The principle way we get new entries is to have readers look around the world for things that seem new or significant,“ says John Simpson, chief editor of the OED. Contributors have included a Nobel laureate and an inmate at an insane asylum, among thousands of others. “We have about 200,000 example sentences coming into the department each year.“ Simpson(John, not Homer)and Ms colleagues whittle that list down to the few that seem to have got a solid foothold in popular usage. He says his job also gives him an excuse to watch a lot of action films, soap operas and quiz shows, to look for more new terms. “Many terms are much older than you think they are,“ says Sheidlower. “Phat,“ for example, makes its debut in the OED today as a slang term meaning cool. But it has been African-American slang since at least the 1960s, OED researchers found. The word even appeared with its present meaning in Time magazine in 1963. The dictionary contains some surprises for people who think they are using the latest, cutting-edge jargon.

Islam is a complete way of life. It considers the family the corner stone of Islamic society. It bases the atmosphere in the family on sacrifice, love, loyalty, and obedience. When we say “family“ we mean the traditional definition of it, namely husband, wife and children. Grandparents are also part of the extended Muslim family. It may be asked here: how does Islam organize family relationships? To answer this we have to concentrate on: husband wife relationship and parent children relationship. As for husband wife relationship the following verse portrays the right Islamic atmosphere: “And among his signs is this: He created for you spouses from yourselves that you might find rest in them, and He ordained between you love and mercy.“ The Prophet of Islam p.b.u.h. also stressed these meanings when he said: The best among you are those who are best to their families and I am the best of you to my family. He once exclaimed: it is only the evil one who abuses them(women)and the honored one is he who honors them. Once a man came to the Prophet p.b.u.h. and asked: who is the person who is most worthy of my good companionship? The Prophet answered your mother, your mother, your mother then your father. That is why Islam made Paradise under the feet of mothers according to one tradition of the Prophet p.b.u.h. These are among the main chapters of the Quran that decide and clearly depict the Islamic relationship between parents and their children. It is a relationship based as we see on belief in Allah, and feeling that He observes all what we do and mat we are accountable to Him even in the bad breath that we may release a-gainst our parents when we are angry. Even this has to be controlled. Let us remember, however, that it is only parents who do their duty, who deserve this honorable treatment of their children. That is why when a parent came to the Prophet p.b.u.h. and complained to him about the ingratitude of his son, the son said: He was ungrateful to me O Messenger of Allah, before I showed ingratitude to him. So the Prophet p.b.u.h. did not blame the son but disliked the attitude of his parent. This is a message to all parents. (*本文中的Prophet of Islam p．b．u．h指先知穆罕墨德，也被称为穆圣；p．b．u．h即peace be upon)

The Iroquois people are also known as

Before the birth of Skennenrahowi, the Iroquois people could best be described as

When Skennenrahowi grew to be a young man, he believed

After Aiionwatha’s daughters were killed, he

The Great Law of Peace was recorded